Do we need more convention centers?

There’s an interesting article over on the Atlantic’s Cities Blog about convention centers proliferating as, well conventions decline:

The reason for all this bustle is entirely economic: cities believe that convention centers are key to bringing in those coveted tourism dollars. The promise of huge groups of visitors descending, in need of places to sleep, eat, shop, perhaps catch a show, is an alluring one, especially for cities that struggle to get residents downtown.

But there’s a problem with this building bonanza, and it’s a doozy: There aren’t really enough conventions to go around. The actual number of conventions hosted in the U.S. has fallen over the last decade. Attendance at the 200 largest conventions peaked at about 5 million in the mid-1990s and has fallen steadily since then.

(SNIP)

Aas a center, [Chicago’s McCormick Place] has a lot of selling points. For one, Chicago is well-located. It’s a major city in the center of the country. It’s easily accessible by air (another national center of conventions, Atlanta, shares this virtue) and there are a lot of hotels and restaurants nearby. “For conventions, the main concern is to attract as many attendees as possible,” Gregg says. “You choose a place that people are going to want to go to, that’s appealing to them.”

Still, despite all these advantages, Chicago’s been struggling to keep up. Between 2001 and 2011, the number delegates attending trade shows and meetings at McCormick place fell about 37 percent, from 1,333,906 to 828,013. Other national venues have seen a similar decline. As the Brookings Institution’s Sanders writes, “major commercial centers, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and New Orleans have all seen significant recent loss in convention activity, even as they expand their convention centers.” In Las Vegas and Orlando — the two up-and-comers in the convention space — recent expansions have done little to grow the number of visitors per year.